


these legs, for instance, mine.

by zjofierose



Series: star, star verse (YOI poly verse) [11]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathing/Washing, Caretaking, Concussions, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Head Injury, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Skating, Injury, Injury Recovery, Insecurity, Intimacy, M/M, Massage, Near Future, Non-Sexual Intimacy, OT4, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Recovery, References to Depression, Sexual Intimacy, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28562862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: Otabek is injured on the rink; recovery is a frustrating process, but Victor is there to help him through.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov/Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin/Victor Nikiforov
Series: star, star verse (YOI poly verse) [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596319
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: YOI Rare Pair Week 2021





	these legs, for instance, mine.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 1 of the 2021 Rare Pair Week: Accidents. This is not quite as angsty as the tags make it sound, I think, but I tried to tag liberally cause I know that this stuff can squick a lot of folks. Please see the end notes if you want more details about what happens before reading!
> 
> Part of the Star, Star verse, so it is OT4, but the primary focus is very much Victor/Otabek.

He comes to himself in a hospital bed, his mind fuzzy and his body a chorus of pain. 

“Beka?” It’s Victor’s voice, and Otabek nods, then immediately regrets it. “Do you know where you are?”

Otabek takes a moment to let the spots fade from his vision. “Hospital?” 

“Yes.” Victor’s voice is calm and firm. “You’ve been in an accident. You’ll need to have surgery in the morning, but everything will be okay.” Otabek carefully looks over. Victor’s smile is tight, thin. Meant to be reassuring, in spite of how it’s very much not.

“What happened?” Otabek asks, glancing around the room, then back to Victor. There’s an IV plugged into his arm and a hospital gown and blankets covering him. The view from the window is dark and Victor looks tired, bags beneath his eyes and his hair rumpled and dull in the artificial light of the room.

“You fell,” Victor says without preamble. “No one was watching you specifically, so we don’t know quite what happened. But you hit your head pretty hard and you fractured some bones in your foot. That’s what the surgery’s for - they need to put some pins in so that it heals up properly.”

Otabek exhales. He’s aware of the terrible throbbing of his head, the way his brain seems to slosh if he moves at all, but Victor’s words trigger a new awareness of the pain that’s radiating up his leg from his left foot. 

“How long?” 

“You fell just before lunch. It’s about eleven pm now.” Victor pauses. “Yura and Yuuri were here. The hospital would only let one of us stay overnight.”

Otabek thinks this through, taking his time. It makes sense; Yuuri and Yura are in the first heat of the season, and will need to rest and go to practice tomorrow. Victor is newly retired, and can afford a night in an uncomfortable chair. 

There are faint dream-like snippets floating past in his mind as the fog slowly ebbs from his thoughts: Yura’s tearful fury, Yuuri’s dark eyes huge in his pale face. Victor speaking to the doctors in sharp Russian with an arm around them both. It feels like something he might have seen in a half-remembered movie a decade ago.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation,” Otabek says finally. 

“No.” Victor cracks a wan smile. “Concussions are funny things. You don’t seem to have any skull damage or bleeding, so you should be fine in the long run. But you’ve been awake on and off for a while, and asking questions.”

“I remember going to the rink this morning,” Otabek tells him. “And then nothing until… now, really. A few flashes of things, nothing concrete.”

Victor nods. “They also gave you some medication so you would forget them cutting your skate off and setting your foot. I’m sure that didn’t help.”

“Surgery in the morning?” Otabek asks, trying to distract himself from one deeply unsettling thought with another.

“Yes. They let me sign off on it, since you weren’t in a position to consent.” There’s a flicker of conflict on Victor’s face. “You can decline it if you want, but from what the doctors here and the specialists at the rink told me, it seemed like the best option for the fastest healing.”

“No.” Otabek lets his eyes shut. It doesn’t help the roiling of his brain. He opens them again and holds out a hand. Victor takes it, slipping his cold fingers in between Otabek’s, careful of what Otabek now realizes is a line of scrapes and blooming bruises tracing up his whole right side. “I trust your decisions. If you talked to the experts and that’s what seems best, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Victor nods, thumb stroking absently across the back of Otabek’s hand. “Get some sleep,” he says, and Otabek can feel the medication in his veins already dragging him under. “Your surgery’s at nine in the morning. I’ll see you before you go in, and I’ll be waiting for you when you wake up.”

“Yura and Yuuri?” he manages, his eyes falling shut again. Victor’s voice is a balm, gentling over all of the hurts that echo through his limbs. 

“They’re upset, but they’ll be okay,” Victor says, and there’s the sensation of cold fingers gentling across Otabek’s forehead. “We’ll all be okay. It will just take a little time.”

\--

He comes home two days later, hopped up on pain meds and crutching his way carefully up the short stone path to their house. Yuuri and Yura are hovering around as Victor carries the small plastic bag from the hospital full of medication and instructional pamphlets. 

Otabek is physically fit, but crutches are a literal and physical pain regardless, fiddly and unbalanced and smelling of neoprene. He hates them a little bit, but he hates  _ everything _ a little bit right now. The pain meds leave him foggy and disoriented in his own mind while also not being strong enough to make him  _ actually _ stop hurting. He can feel the jostling of every step in his bones, in the unending throbbing of his head. 

He makes it inside, barely hearing the whirlwind chatter of concerned English and Russian that floats past him, mixed with Japanese asides. His secondary languages have deserted him in the cotton-wool fog of lingering concussion and medication side-effects, and he’s just lucky that Yura and Victor have managed to learn enough Kazakh that they understand him when he asks for water. 

They’ve moved all his stuff to the guest room on the first floor, and for some reason that’s what finally makes it real for him - the hours he’d spent in the hospital bored and aching, dreaming of coming home to take a shower and sleep in their shared bed upstairs until he heals and can go back to the ice. Now even that’s denied him - he hurts, he stinks of hospital, and he’s relegated to the guest room. 

Otabek doesn’t realize he’s crying until Yura makes a noise of distress and wraps himself around Otabek, crutches and all. There’s a look like heartbreak on Victor’s face, and Yuuri is still bustling, taking the plastic bag from Victor and putting the clothes from it into the hamper, setting Otabek’s watch and wallet and keys on the nightstand. 

“I’m sorry, Beka,” Victor whispers, “it’s just for a little while.”

“We’ll all sleep down here,” Yura declares, but Otabek shakes his head sharply. He wants to shake Yura off, wants to throw the crutches away, wants both to bury himself in his partners’ embrace and to never look them in the eyes again. 

“No, there’s not room.” Otabek forces his emotions down and sighs, rubbing Yura’s back. “And you and Yuuri need to stay well-rested. You’ve got Skate America and Skate Canada in a couple weeks.”

“We’ll take turns. Sharing with you.” Yuuri lifts his chin, meeting Otabek’s eyes from across the room. “We’re not going to leave you down here alone, Ota-kun. We’re not going to just abandon you.”

Otabek forces what he thinks is a smile onto his face. “Thanks, Yuuri-kun,” he says, and lets it go.

\--

They do share, at first. Yuuri and Yura take turns sleeping beside him, rising early in the morning to run to the rink while Victor helps him shower and makes them breakfast. It’s not ideal; Yuuri’s a blanket hog and with Yura comes Potya, which leads to Otabek waking up gasping in pain more than once when Potya leaps onto the bed and therefore onto his foot. But after two weeks, Yura and Yuuri are gone, first to Skate America where Yuuri wins silver beneath Leo’s gold, then early to Skate Canada while they’re still adjusted to the time zones so that Yura can try to beat JJ on his home turf.

And then it’s just him and Victor and Otabek’s broken foot. 

It’s a relief, in a way, and Otabek feels guilty about it. But Yuuri and Yura, every day of their lives confronts him with the fact that he’s lost his own entire season. He’ll be lucky to get in shape in time for the start of the next, what with physical therapy and conditioning and trying not to either re-injure himself or cause a new injury from favoring his weak side. 

They can’t help it, of course, and rationally Otabek knows this - when you are a skater in a season, everything revolves around you and your body and your program, and there is nothing else. Otabek wouldn’t want them to walk on eggshells around him, or try to keep their lives from him. But still - it’s freeing to not hear about jumps and program changes and costume alterations. There’s a silence and a peace to the house with just him and Victor that’s comforting.

He still feels bad about it, though. Originally the plan had been for them all to go; Otabek had also been booked for Skate Canada, and they’d planned to make a good trip of it, all four of them gone for a month. A working vacation, as it were, ending by celebrating Otabek’s birthday in Vancouver. 

Instead, Otabek’s birthday is spent recovering from a second surgery where they remove the pins holding his foot together. It’s outpatient, so Victor drives him in the morning, waits in the car so that he can video-call with Yuuri and Yura about their time in Vancouver, then takes a groggy Otabek home. 

Otabek naps, then bathes, relieved and disappointed in equal measure to be capable of it on his own these days. He hates being dependent, but it was nice early on to have Victor step into the shower with him, his naked form warm against Otabek’s back, his strong arms a careful support whenever Otabek needed them. 

He starts physical therapy in earnest tomorrow. He’s been exercising his leg as much as possible to prevent atrophy, but couldn’t do anything that would disrupt the stability of his foot for six weeks. Now, with the pins out and the bones knitted, it’s time to begin the real work. He can’t say he’s looking forward to it, but he knows it’s the only way forward, and  _ forward _ is the only thing keeping him going right now.

The room is chilly when he gets out of the shower, but he spreads his towel on the bed and grabs the lotion. The cast they’d put on him to keep his Achilles from shortening had left swaths of dead skin that he’d sloughed off under the hot water, but his left leg is a sorry sight regardless, shriveled and pale. They’d cleaned his foot after the surgery, but the bandages need to be changed and the skin around them is still yellowed with iodine stain. 

It disgusts him on a visceral level. It looks like no part of him, no piece of his body or his life or his career. It aches, and it revolts, and it feels like betrayal. Otabek hates it.

“I wish I could just cut it off.” 

Victor blinks from where he leans in the doorway, then crosses to take the lotion from Otabek’s hand. 

“Yeah,” he says agreeably. “I remember that feeling. It’ll get better, though.” He warms the lotion in his hand and reaches for Otabek’s knee. His hands are strong, his grip sure as he works the scentless cream into the dry skin and weakened muscle. 

“How long did it take you?” Otabek asks. He’d been only just beginning to skate seriously when Victor had broken his ankle at a competition, had been stretchered off the ice with a white face and torn costume, but he remembers watching it on TV with his heart in his mouth. The memory has lingered through the past weeks, reminding him of the small scars the decorate Victor’s pale ankle, of the way he rubs it absently in the cold.

“A solid year before I was back to competition form, longer than that before I won anything again,” Victor says, pouring more lotion into his hand. His thumbs trace the line of muscles running down Otabek’s shin while his clever fingers push and pull his calf. 

Otabek looks away. The yard outside is dry and brown, dead of frost and waiting for the first snow to bury it. It’s his twenty-third birthday today. Plenty of skaters retire around twenty-four. 

“It will be different for you,” Victor says, his fingers deftly manipulating Otabek’s ankle. “I promise.”

“You don’t know that.” Otabek knows his tone is mulish, knows that he’s been an absolute pill through most of this. He’s grateful for all that Victor has overlooked, for the steady pragmatism of his presence and his calm demeanor through Otabek’s moods. Yura and Yuuri have weathered Victor, Otabek thinks, have taught him how to be an anchor instead of ballast. 

Victor massages carefully around Otabek’s fresh wounds, pressing his thumbs into the arch of Otabek’s foot until he gasps with something he’s not sure he can label as either pleasure or pain. He spreads lotion between Otabek’s toes, then carefully wipes his hands before applying the ointment and dressings to Otabek’s foot. 

When he’s done, he presses a kiss to the top of the bandages.

“I do know that,” he says, “because I know you. You are a mature, strong, and intelligent skater. You will have to relearn your body’s limits and you will have to be patient and determined while you work your way back into shape, but you  _ are _ all of those things. You will skate again. You will  _ win _ again.”

“ _ You _ were Victor Nikiforov,” Otabek objects, looking away from the earnesty in Victor’s expression. He feels like his heart cracked open six weeks ago and he doesn’t know how to hold it together.

“I was a workaholic prodigy,” Victor answers, picking up the lotion and beginning to work on Otabek’s other leg. “I believed I could do anything, and I was afraid of losing everything if I wasn’t what everyone believed I was. I pushed myself too hard, too fast, and prolonged my recovery time.  _ You _ ,” he meets Otabek’s gaze, and the tiny lines at the corners of his sky-blue eyes catch and hold Otabek within them. “You are smarter, and will do better.”

Otabek flops back on the bed. There’s a chill in the air, but he doesn’t mind it. It’s nice to close his eyes and let himself drift, carried on the sensation of Victor’s hands on his skin. 

He’s no stranger to pain. One doesn’t become a top athlete, much less in a sport like ice skating, without a constant litany of blisters and strains and exhausted aches. But he’s been blessed to never hurt like this before; to never have felt the utter betrayal of actual serious damage, the strange infliction of sliced flesh and artificial skeletal structure. 

“Vitka,” he says, and his voice sounds strange in his own ears, unmoored and distant. “I’d like you to fuck me.”

The hands on his ankle stutter, then resume their careful pressure. 

“Are you sure?” 

It’s a fair question; Otabek hasn’t really felt desire since his accident, first too drugged up or in too much pain by turns, then too generally out of sorts. To be fair, he’s not sure it’s really desire he’s feeling now, isn’t sure he’ll even get it up. But he wants it anyway, wants to subsume himself in something outside of his own head.

“Yes,” he says, and Victor hums, finishing his attentions to Otabek’s foot before he stands. 

“What do you want?” Victor asks from the end of the bed, and Otabek forces himself to focus long enough to consider the question. 

“I just want you in me,” he answers honestly. “I need to feel you.”

He hears Victor draw a breath, then his swift footsteps as he goes to the living room to fetch the spare lube. 

“You can stay dressed,” he tells Victor when he hears him return, “I know you get cold.”

Victor snorts. “Big of you, thanks,” he says, and then there’s his weight on the bed, his strong hands turning Otabek onto his side. “Knee up,” he instructs, and Otabek lets his body be guided by Victor’s touch. “Do you want prep?”

“No,” Otabek shakes his head, then turns to let Victor kiss him. It’s soft and unintrusive, lingering, but he can feel the hardening of Victor’s cock where it’s pressed up against him through Victor’s sweatpants. “Just go slow. I’m good.”

Victor kisses him again, running his hands up and down Otabek’s skin. “Okay,” he breathes, and Otabek feels him shuffling around to pull his cock free. Victor’s jacket is open and he must not be wearing a shirt underneath it because the skin of his chest is cool and smooth against Otabek’s back. 

Otabek can hear the click of the lube cap and Victor’s muffled hiss at the coldness of it on his dick, and then there’s a blunt pressure at Otabek’s entrance. He breathes out and pushes down, and Victor slips in, moving slowly but surely as he rocks ever-so-slightly back and forth. His hands are clutching at Otabek’s chest and Otabek catches one, links their fingers tight. 

“This okay?” Victor asks, his hips slow like honey in the cold, and Otabek hums in encouragement. 

“Yes,” Otabek drags Victor’s hand to his mouth and kisses it. “Keep going.”

Victor does as asked, deepening his thrusts slowly until he’s balls deep in Otabek and pulls to a shuddering pause. 

It’s wonderful; it’s exactly what Otabek needs. He feels surrounded by Victor’s larger form, his arms wrapped tight around Otabek’s shoulders and chest, their legs entangled. He feels safe, hidden from the world and cared for in a way that almost lets him forget the last six weeks behind him, the long struggle yet to come. 

He’s not hard, but it doesn’t matter. It feels good to be held like this, to be known and covered and entered like this. It feels good, feels important, to use his body for pleasure, his own and that of a lover who has cared for him so selflessly. 

“Vitka,” he whispers, “don’t stop.”

Victor nods against his shoulder, dragging his cock out and then back in again, before coming to another stop. “I just,” he says, and Otabek hears with a certain distant shock that Victor’s voice is thick. “I just - just give me a sec.”

“ _ Vitka _ .” Otabek tries to turn in Victor’s embrace, but Victor shakes his head against Otabek’s neck and holds him fast as he is, wrapped in Victor’s limbs and speared on his cock. 

“It’s just that I was so worried,” Victor whispers. “I guess I haven’t really stopped to think about it. But having you well enough to want this, to want  _ me _ , Bekasha-”

“I always want you, Vitka,” Otabek interrupts, and Victor presses a kiss to his bare shoulder. 

“We knew you’d be alright very quickly,” Victor says, his voice still nothing more than a murmur. “You were responsive when they took you out of the rink. But the last thing I saw was you joking around with Yura, and then you were lying there on the ice, and I just-”

“I’m here, Vitka,” Otabek tells him, and presses a kiss to Victor’s palm, then another to each finger in turn. These are the hands that have helped him in and out of bed; have changed his bandages and driven him to appointments; this is the hand that he held all that first night in the hospital. “I’m here, and I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Victor says, “you will,” but he lies very still for a long moment while Otabek listens to their heartbeats slowing. There’s a crow cawing outside the window and the faint sound of traffic, and Otabek lets himself rest in the comfort of Victor’s concern. His foot aches and he’s starting to get hungry, but neither of those matter, not in this moment. 

“Do you want to keep going?” Victor’s cock is still hard within him, but Otabek knows that if he said the word, Victor would pull off and forget about it in a heartbeat. 

“Yes,” he says. “Please, Vitka.”

“Okay.” Victor hides his face in Otabek’s neck and begins to move, the slide growing warm and slick between them as Victor loses himself in the pleasures of their bodies together, of the sweat-sweet friction of hips and thighs and hands. 

It takes a little while, both of them tired and riding the edge of emotion, but Otabek treasures every moment of it. He feels it when Victor’s thrusts grow ragged, Victor’s cock twitching where it’s buried deep inside him. He presses down, squeezes his thighs together and hears Victor’s breath catch as he spends within Otabek’s body, his arms a muscled band around Otabek’s torso that knocks the breath from him. 

It’s everything Otabek could ever want. 

Victor’s breathing evens out, his heartbeat slowing where it thumps against the planes of Otabek’s back. “Okay?” he asks, and Otabek turns his head so Victor can press their faces together. Victor’s always like this after sex; clingy, like he wants to climb inside his lover’s skin and make a home. 

“Perfect,” Otabek answers, and presses back.

\--

Yura and Yuuri return three days later in a cloud of luggage and skate bags and medals and airplane funk. They shower and stuff themselves full of food and complain about jet lag and exclaim over Otabek’s lack of screws and extensive PT schedule, and Otabek lets them touch him and hug him and tell him all about what they did while they were gone. 

Victor stands back and watches, a fond smile on his face and a careful distance in his eyes. 

Otabek waits until their lovers have gone upstairs to unpack before he steps carefully across the kitchen to wind his arms around Victor’s torso. 

“Vitya,” he says, holding Victor’s cautious gaze. “Thank you.”

The distance melts away as Victor’s eyes crinkle at the edges. He wraps his arms around Otabek in turn.

“Of course,” Victor answers, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Otabek falls and hits his head and breaks his foot. He has to have surgery to put pins in his foot to stabilize it, and then surgery later to remove them. There is some talk about him being in the hospital and in pain, and again about the frustration of recovery from an injury, but it's not very graphic, I don't think?
> 
> Also, this is loosely based on a combinations of an injury I had and an injury a friend had, but I definitely did not go googling the gory details, so it's aiming for reasonably realistic, but I'm sure it's not perfect. 
> 
> Find me on twitter @zjofierose!


End file.
